Poems ✍️

There is only one single way. Go into yourself.
Search for the reason that bids you write;
find out whether it is spreading out its roots
in the deepest places of your heart,
acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die
if it were denied to you to write.

This above all - ask yourself
in the stillest hour of your night:
MUST I write?
Delve into yourself for a deep answer.
And if this is 'Yes! I must! '
then build your life according to this necessity;
your life, even within its most indifferent and slightest hour
must be a sign of this urge
and a testimony to it.

Then draw near to Nature.
Then try, like some first human being,
to say what you see and experience and love and lose.

Do not write love-poems;
avoid at first those forms that are too facile and commonplace:
they are the most difficult, for
it takes a great, fully matured power
to give something of your own
where good and even excellent traditions
come to mind in quantity.

Therefore save yourself from these general themes
and seek those which your own everyday life offers you;
describe your sorrows and desires, passing thoughts and
the belief in some sort of beauty -
describe all these with loving, quiet, humble sincerity,
and use, to express yourself,
the things in your environment,
the images from your dreams,
and the objects of your memory.

If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it;
blame yourself, tell yourself that
you are not poet enough to call forth its riches;
for to the creator there is no poverty
and no poor indifferent place.

Go into yourself and test the deeps
in which your life takes rise;
at its source you will find the answer to the question,
whether you must create.